God has a Soul
The
first clue is to be found in Leviticus:
11 And I will set
my tabernacle among you: and my soul shall not abhor you. (Leviticus 26)
So it would appear that
God has a soul. Whilst not a surprising result in itself, our present understandings of the definition of a soul would
indicate that this comprises both spirit and body (See Introduction I9 What is a soul, What is a Spirit?). Therefore this would suggest that God is not just spirit but also
has his spirit contained within some almighty corporeal entity, i.e. a divine body.
And Therefore a Body
So if God has a body what sort of a body is it? God himself rarely paid a
physical visit to earth but his body when he did ‘materialise’ for Moses, his favoured one, the scriptural description
identifies several attributes:
20 And he said,
Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live.
21 And the LORD said,
Behold, there is a place by me, and thou shalt stand upon a rock:
22 And it shall come to
pass, while my glory passeth by, that I will put thee in a cleft of the rock, and will cover thee with my hand while I pass
by:
23 And I will take away mine hand, and thou shalt see my back parts: but my face shall
not be seen. (Exodus 33)
So we know that in this manifestation God has a face, hand and a back (which
presumably means he also has a front where his face was). The questions we do not yet have answered though are whether this
in any way relates to his composition in Heaven or indeed whether he started out as pure spirit and created his own body or
whether his body predates any of his creation works.
So let us look at scriptures
that indicate that God may have further body parts such as a shoulder:
9 And it occurred that as soon as he turned his shoulder to go from Samuel, God began changing the heart of
his into another; and all these signs proceeded to come true on that day. (1 Samuel 10)
Whilst the following passage is from a vision of Micaiah, how far should we take the literal translation to be purely symbolic?
19 And he went on to say: “Therefore hear the word of Jehovah: I certainly see
Jehovah sitting upon his throne and all the army of the heavens standing by him, to his right and to his left.
20 And Jehovah proceeded to say, ‘Who will fool A'hab, that he may go up and fall at Ra'moth-gil'e·ad?’
And this one began to say something like this, while that one was saying something like that.
21
Finally a spirit came out and stood before Jehovah and said, ‘I myself shall fool him.’ At that Jehovah said to
him, ‘By what means?’ (1 Kings 22)
Jehovah sitting while a
spirit stood before him implies that both angels and God have legs upon which they may choose to stand or not. Sitting also
implies that God himself has ‘back parts’ in God’s own words (I dare not use mine) upon which he sits. Also
he has a left and a right side as well as a front and back as previously described.
Furthermore it would appear that our God has a voice that enables him to engage in discussion with humans since it was audible
to Adam and Eve. So presumably God has a mouth with a tongue:
8 And they heard the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid
themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden.
9 And the
LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou? (Genesis 3)
Oh yes, and it looks like
the above scripture confirms that God has legs since he was taking a stroll in his garden! And eyes to see (presumably in
his face?):
8 But Noah found
grace in the eyes of the LORD. (Genesis 6)
And an ear to hear by:
20 And as for Ishmael,
I have heard thee: Behold, I have blessed him, and will make him fruitful, and will multiply him exceedingly; twelve
princes shall he beget, and I will make him a great nation. (Genesis 17)
Well more than one
actually (presumably two?):
7 In my distress
I called upon the LORD, and cried to my God: and he did hear my voice out of his temple, and my cry did enter into his ears.
(2Samuel 22)
And, as if further confirmation was required, the complete wherewithal to
have a conversation with Abraham with presumably, at the very least, all the necessary sensory and communication equipment
that any man possesses about his created person:
27 And Abraham answered and said, Behold now, I have taken upon me to speak unto the Lord, which am
but dust and ashes:
28 Peradventure there shall lack five of the fifty righteous: wilt thou
destroy all the city for lack of five? And he said, If I find there forty and five, I will not destroy it. (Genesis 18)
Oh yes and we were expecting a mouth:
9 There went up a smoke out of his nostrils, and fire out of his mouth devoured: coals were kindled
by it. (2Samuel 22)
And feet to stand on (presumably at the end of his legs):
10 and they got to see the God of Israel. And under his feet there was what seemed like
a work of sapphire flagstones and like the very heavens for purity. (Exodus 24)
And an arm to connect his hand with his shoulder:
15 And you must remember that you became a slave in the land of Egypt and Jehovah your God proceeded to bring
you out from there with a strong hand and an outstretched arm. That is why Jehovah your God commanded you to carry on the
sabbath day. (Deuteronomy 5)
And nose to breath with:
8 And by a breath from your nostrils waters were heaped up; They stood still like a dam of floods; The surging
waters were congealed in the heart of the sea. (Exodus 15)
And smell by:
21 And the LORD
smelled a sweet savor; and the LORD said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake; for
the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have
done. (Genesis 8)
Eyes to see and a heart; could this be a physical heart or a purely spiritual
one?
16 For now have
I chosen and sanctified this house, that my name may be there for ever: and mine eyes and mine heart shall be there perpetually.
(2Chronicles 7)
Er, and God has bowels (that make soundings!!):
15 Look down from heaven, and behold from the habitation of thy holiness and of
thy glory: where is thy zeal and thy strength, the sounding of thy bowels and of thy mercies toward me? are they restrained?
(Isaiah 63)
Complete with eyelids to enable them to be closed:
4 The LORD is in his holy temple, the LORD'S throne is in heaven: his eyes
behold, his eyelids try, the children of men. (Psalms 11)
So either directly from the above scriptures or by reasonable logical, albeit human, deduction these define a fairly complete
set of divine corporeal features that any man would find equivalence with about his own created person:
- A face presumably complete with mouth, eyes, nose, ears
- An arm complete with shoulder and hand (presumably at either end)
- Leg(s) presumably connecting the ‘back parts’ to the feet
- Presumably a front (since a back cannot exist without one) together with both right
and left sides
- Innermost parts including
a heart and bowels
So certainly in
God’s dealings with man, either through his direct manifestation to man or the description of his ‘physical’
attributes as presented through his Word in scripture, it would appear that God is telling us that we are in his image in
more than spirit but also in soul and therefore body. This appears to be the case also when He is in session with his sons
the angels who might arguably be of a similar ‘physical’ configuration themselves. Presumably this might be a
heavenly version of a physical body which is well outside our present understandings but nonetheless it seems that some form
of ‘physical’ body is a necessary vehicle to contain the spirit of all spirit creatures in heaven and upon the
earth.
The Body Created
Let us examine the nature of our God a little further. The following two scriptures throw some light on this:
24 God is a Spirit, and those worshiping him must worship with spirit and truth.”
(John 4)
4 God’s own spirit
made me, And the Almighty’s own breath proceeded to bring me to life. (Job 33)
So it would appear that John described Jehovah as a spirit and that indeed is the essence of God and of man and the angels
also. From Job we learn that God’s spirit made Job but that it took God’s breath to bring him to (a physical)
life, i.e. to create Job as a complete living soul, a breather. So spirit begets spirit and soul begets soul. But if God is
spirit how did God get to be a soul? Given that God’s spirit has creative ability well beyond mankind’s understanding
then it is not unreasonable to deduct from this that God ‘started’ as a pure spirit. When he ‘discovered’
his creative abilities and he decided that he wanted to create fellow spirit creatures he realised that he needed a means
for communicating with his sons and they amongst themselves. This would also be a means of spirit creatures getting things
done with/in creation. So he made himself a ‘body’ that would form the archetype for those of his created sons
and so the ‘soul’ was created. Isaiah clearly identifies the combination of the physical with the spiritual in
God’s creation:
5 This is what the [true]
God, Jehovah, has said, the Creator of the heavens and the Grand One stretching them out; the One laying out the earth and
its produce, the One giving breath to the people on it, and spirit to those walking in it: (Isaiah 42)
And some examples of bodily activity of God and man:
11 And I shall certainly put my tabernacle in the midst of YOU, and my soul will not abhor YOU.
12 And I shall indeed walk in the midst of YOU and prove myself YOUR God, and YOU, on YOUR part, will prove
yourselves my people. (Leviticus 26)
7 For Jehovah your God
has blessed you in every deed of your hand. He well knows of your walking through this great wilderness. These forty years
Jehovah your God has been with you. You have not lacked a thing.”’ (Deuteronomy 2)
7 During all the time that I have walked about
among all the sons of Israel, was there a word that I spoke with one of the tribes of Israel that I commanded to shepherd
my people Israel, saying, ‘Why did YOU people not build me a house of cedars?’ (2 Samuel 7)
